Hey!
I got rid of most of my things, as I left the US intending to spend a long time traveling. Things didn’t exactly go as planned, and I’m back sooner than I expected. I’m slowly trying to sort things out, and one particular thing is that I’d like to have a proper desktop PC setup again.
I’m under the impression that a friend I left most of my PC hardware with hasn’t gotten around to using any of it, so I’m fairly sure I can reclaim my i7-4790K and an Asus Z97I-PLUS motherboard.
I have a MSI GS63VR(-001, i7-6700HQ and GTX 1060) which is a decently capable machine, but it’s got weird driver problems and there’s a few little reasons it’s inconvenient to use it at my desk–not really worth getting into here. The main thing is that there’s a 1TB Samsung 960 Evo in there I’d be willing to swap into the desktop.
The catch is… the Z97I board has a PCI-E 2.0 interface according to Asus’ website.
With two native PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth, M.2 supports up to 10Gbit/s data-transfer speeds. It is the perfect choice for an operating system drive, making your whole PC work that much faster. It supports Intel® Rapid Storage Technology to ensure even faster access to data, refresh applications automatically and awake from sleep in just seconds!
It sounds like PCI-E 2.0 x2, but I am going to try digging deeper on that. What M.2 drive should I add to this system? I’m a fan of having a larger amount of quick storage (see the 1TB Evo), but I don’t want to “over buy” a drive that’s faster than the slot can utilize.
I think I have 2x8GB sticks of memory for the system–any idea how much of a difference it would make if I got faster memory? I’m assuming the RAM I have is nothing special. I doubt it’s really worth spending extra money if I already have sticks.
One of the main kickers for wanting to build a system is to get an AMD video card, my monitor supports Freesync. It’s the Crossover 3412UM, so it’s 3440x1440 and is supposed to go up to 95hz–I haven’t been able to make that happen on this laptop GTX 1060.
The most demanding game I’m interested in playing right now is Monster Hunter World, and I would really appreciate having adaptive sync, seeing as this 1060 fluctuates a lot between ~40 and 60fps (capped) and the quality goes all over the place. Right now, MHW doesn’t run in 21:9, but there are mods in the works in the event that official support doesn’t happen. So right now I’m running in 2560x1440(? the game says 3440x1440, but uses black bars to make it 16:9), but it’s possible I am eventually running in 3440x1440.
Based on my impression and understanding of how the cards line up, I’m assuming a RX 580 would offer similar performance (and supposedly AMD gave the game a boost with a driver update), and going with Vega would probably let me squeeze a few more frames out at a higher level of detail. But I’m not sure how to figure out which is the better value. The RX 580s sitting around $300 (generally less) feels kind of bad when sometimes Vega can be had below $500. Is anyone using a 580 for Monster Hunter World? How does it feel?
Assuming I can salvage this motherboard and CPU, and probably a set of RAM and a Noctua NH-L9i, what do you think would be the best value for getting this thing up and running Monster Hunter World?
~ <$50: I’m looking at cheap ITX cases like a Silverstone Sugo and I’d probably mod it similar to this for fun.
~ <$150: M.2 SSD
~ <$300, <$500: Video card, whether RX 580 or Vega 56
And a power supply. Depending on how much I can shrink the case I might end up using unorthodox solutions like the HDPLEX.
Thoughts?